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CONSCIOUSNESS
If we were to survev the various theories about consciousness
that have been proposed in the twenty-five hundred years of known
work, we would find that they fall into two general patterns. There
is what we shall call the first-person account, which results from
attending to how things are in one's own case. And there is the thirdperson account, which results from attending to how things are when
someone else is conscious in some way. I take these terms from gNmmar; one typically uses the grammatical first-person to say things
about oneself and one typically uses the grammatical third-person to
say things about others. (We could call these the "subjective" and
"objective" account, respectively, except that these terms are currently used in so many different ways that we would run the risk
of introducing irrelevant considerations.) These approaches yield
quite different accounts of consciousness.
The
When we ask of a man who has been hit on the head whether
he is conscious, what do we mean? Well, what do we expect
to find if we are told he is not conscious, and what do we expect to find if we are told that he is conscious? We expect that if
he is not conscious, he will not respond to certain stimuli; for example, he will not flinch at a loud noise nearby. On the other hand,
we expect that if he is conscious, he will flinch at the noise. That is,
we expect certain kinds of behavior under certain stimuli. For example, we expect he will open his eyes when he is spoken to, perhaps
third-person
account
14
Consciousness
15
try to get up, ask what happened to him, and so on. If he has not
suffered bodily injury, then we will expect even more complex behavior. If, on request, he is able to get up, walk around \vithout
bumping into things, reply to questions, follow commands, then it
would be absurd for anyone to wonder if he is conscious yet. Just
that kind of behavior is exactly the sort of behavior we have in mind
when we say that a person has regained consciousness. This fact
might lead us to say that "consciousness" is to be defined in terms
of the kind of bodily behavior elicited by certain sorts of stimuli.
Such a definition would fall under the heading of what is usually
called behaviorism.
Behaviorism has played an important role in recent psychology.
It was adopted as the label for a major movement in twentieth century psychology, and most psychologists today are greatly indebted
to it. Unfortunately, they have often failed to make a distinction
between two forms of it, which may be called methodological behaviorism and metaphysical behaviorism. The former is a method
of approach to problems in the field of psychology; it consists in
confining psychological theories and the procedures for evaluating
those theories to observable behavior. Such a method of approach
has been highly fruitful in dealing with problems in the field of psychology. Metaphysical behaviorism is a theory about the nature
of consciousness and the analysis of expressions referring to consciousness. It is metaphysical, not methodological, behaviorism that
concerns us here.
Behaviorism is a typical third-person account since it proposes
that we define all expressions involving consciousness in terms of
bodily behavior which can be observed in others as easilv as in oneself. But such a view must be carefully formulated, sine~ it is obvious that a person who is conscious or who is in some particular conscious state may not be behaving in any noticeable way. He may just
be flat on his back, eyes shut. Yet he may still be conscious, having
sensations and thoughts, and so on. He may be in pain, for example,
without writhing, groaning, complaining. How is the behaviorist to
take this into account in his theory?
For one thing, the behaviorist may hold that future behavior
is relevant; for example, what a person will write in his diary tonight,
what he will confess under torture tomorrow, what he will say on
his deathbed. But it is clear that this is not sufficient, for the percon
in pain now may never show future behavior appropriate to his being
m pain now.
Some behaviorists distinguish between overt and covert be-
I
1
16
!I
I
Consciousness
havior, the latter being movements that are not noticed, either because they are so very slight or because they occur inside the body
where they cannot be observed very easily. Thus, thinking, for example, can be associated with very slight movements of the lips or,
more plausibly, with slight movements of the tongue or vocal chords.
However, this attempt to evade the difficulty raises new difficulties.
First: recent work with the drug curare, which produces temporary
paralysis, indicates that even covert behavior may be absent during
mental events. Patients with enough curare to produce complete
muscular paralysis report, after the drug has worn off, that there is
no absence of consciousness, thoughts, sensations, ability to think,
images, or the like, during the paralysis. So it may not be possible
to identify mental events with behavior in any sense, either overt or
covert. Second: suppose we did find certain slight muscular movements in the vocal cords when people think. Could it possibly be
argued that when we say of someone that he just had a thought,
we mean by those words something about muscular movements in
his vocal cords? Surely not. One could fully understand such a remark without the slightest knowledge of the muscles of the vocal
chords. So it is not very likely that the meanings of mentalistic terms
can be analyzed in terms of actual behavior.
A typical behavioristic device for dealing with the fact that a
person in a particular mental state may not be behaving in any particular way is to introduce the concept of a disposition to behave.
Dispositions are properties of things such that under certain circumstances the thing that has the dispositional property will undergo a
certain change. For example, brittleness is a dispositional property:
a thing is brittle if, and only if, under suitable circumstances it will
shatter. An object may have the dispositional property of brittleness
and still never shatter; that is why we handle brittle objects with
care. It is because of this feature of dispositional properties that the
behaviorist can use them in his analysis. For if we define thoughts,
feelings, wishes, etc., in terms not of behavior but of dispositions to
behave, then the man who hides his thoughts, feelings, and wishes
behind a poker face and poker behavior would still have dispositions
to behave in certain ways. So to attribute consciousness or some
particular state of consciousness is to attribute a disposition to behave in particular ways.
There is a difficulty here, however, when we come to ask what
dispositions are involved? Consider the man who is conscious. What
dispositions are we to attribute to him? \Ve might say, for a start,
that part of what is involved is a disposition to answer questions.
Consciousness
17
But it is clear that a man may be conscious without being disposed
to answer questions. He may be concentrating on something so
much that he does not even hear the questions; he may not understand the language; he may not wish to answer questions; he may
not be physically capable of answering questions. And, in general,
no matter how elaborately we described the conditions under which
the disposition ,,·ould result in behavior, one could still imagine cases
where the behavior would not be forthcoming even though the man
was fully conscious. So it looks as though the behaviorist's claim
cannot be substantiated; we cannot provide even the beginning of
an analysis in terms of dispositions to behave.
But the behaviorist is not daunted by this difficulty. He will
argue that, although we may not be able to pin down the relevant
dispositions to behave, nevertheless we all have a rough idea of the
kind of behavior that is relevant. Or else how could we ever tell when
someone is conscious? After all, it is only behavior that we have
to go by. Given enough behavior of the right sort, we can establish
that a person is conscious. And it is the behaviorist's proposal that
such behavior, even if it cannot be explicitly described, constitutes
being conscious.
In support of the behaviorist a general feature of dispositional
terms must be acknowledged: we can never spell out in detail what
will happen under various conditions to things that have the disposition, because indefinitely many unforeseeable complexities could interfere with realization of the disposition. 1l1is fact, not the incorrectness of his thesis, creates difficulty for the behaviorist, so his
failure to provide an actual dispositional analysis cannot be held
against him.
Now it must be said at the outset that this third-person acthlrd-person
count does indeed do considerable justice to a great many of
account
the concepts applicable exclusively to conscious beings. If we
say of a person that he is ingenious or witty, resourceful or
industrious, ambitious or considerate, we arc referring predominantly
to what he says and does. And the same goes for knowing Latin,
reminiscing, studying the behavior of a cat, and flying into a rage.
The crucial tests for the application of these terms and, indeed, their
basic content, lie in behavior and behavioral dispositions. 1
For example, to know Latin is to be able to perform in pre-
The merit of the
1 It is one of the great merits of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind (New
York: Barnes and Noble, 1949) that he demonstrates this thesis over and m·er
for an astonishing range of expressions involving a reference to consciousness.
18
Consciousness
scribed ways under certain circumstances. At the very least, one
must be able to translate a goodly number of sentences into and out
of Latin, and it is even better if one can explain why he uses the
constructions he does. To be greedy is to jump at opportunities to
increase one's acquisitions, or at least be strongly inclined to jump
at them, far beyond actual need. And to exercise reason or intelligence is to do things in sensible and efficacious ways, avoiding pitfalls and surmounting obstacles with a minimum of effort.
It might be said in general that the third-person account is
applicable to what can be classified as qualities of mind, personality and character, of skills, abilities and capacities (or the absence
thereof), of habits, tendencies, propensities and bents, of attitudes
and outlooks, and of moods, frames of mind and humors; and to
whatever is an exercise or expression of them.
Why is it that the third-person account is especially applicable
to the analysis of these concepts? It is no accident. This can be seen
when we ask what entitles someone to apply any one of these concepts to himself. Consider, for example, knowing Latin. My opinion
that I know Latin has no special weight, balanced against another's
opinion. Anyone who claims I know Latin must have evidence, and
that includes me. The kind of evidence that is relevant is the kind
that not only I but anyone could have. So others are typically in as
good a position as I am to say of me that I know Latin. In the case
of some concepts, such as ambition, others often are in an even better position to know, for they may look more objectively at my behavior than I do.
The fact that, in principle, I am in no better position to describe my own state indicates that even when I do describe my state,
I take an essentially third-person approach to myself, taking account
of the sorts of things any third person would when he makes a judgment. So the third-person account would be naturally well suited
to the analysis of such states and would furnish an appropriate
analysis.
Note that even for the concepts most amenable to behavioristic analysis, it is out of the question that we should be able to give
a precise dispositional definition. We cannot say in detail just what
dispositions are involved. From that fact, some would conclude that
the third-person account is inadequate even here. But a supporter of
that account would remind us that this is a general feature of dispositional terms.
Whether the third-person account does justice to all of the concepts involving consciousness remains to be seen. Let us turn to a
Consciousness
19
set of cases notorious for the difficulties they offer to a proponent of
the third-person account.
We may bring out the important feature of such cases by
noting a peculiarity of cast~ favorable to the third-person acthird-person
count, cases such as knowing Latin or being ambitious. It may
account
very well be true of a person who is sound asleep that he knows
Latin or is greedy; it is not necessary that there be anything,
as we say, going on before his mind or occupying his consciousness.
When it comes to the exercise or expression of these states, he must;
typically, be awake (I say "typically," because one might argue that
a person speaking Latin in his sleep is exercising his knowledge of
Latin, and the person crying out in his sleep "I want the whole
cake!" is giving expression to his greed). Although it is not easy to
see this point, reflection will show that it is not necessary even in
the standard case of being awake that there be anything particular
going on before his mind or occupying his consciousness when he
gives expression to his knowledge of Latin or his greed. He may
recite a Latin poem automatically or reach out and grab the whole
cake on impulse, without any thought. To be sure, he might be inwardly reciting the poem in addition to reciting it outwardly, and
he might be inwardly enjoying the thought of eating the whole cake
as he grabs it. But such inward experiences are not essential. The
essence of the expression of the knowledge or the greed consists in
what is done outwardly, not what is done inwardly.
To find cases that offer difficulty to the third-person account,
we must look for those cases in which the essence lies in what happens inwardly. It is the thesis of adherents of the third-person account that there are no such cases, that anything involving consciousness can be analyzed in terms of publicly observable behavior
or dispositions toward such behavior.
Let us turn to those cases in which it appears that an essential
feature of the case is the inner occurrence of something, as we say,
"going on before the person's mind" or "occupying his consciousness." The most plausible candidates are sensations (e.g., feeling
pain), mental images (e.g., visualizing a scene), and thoughts (e.g.,
having the thought, upon awakening, that today is a holiday). Let
us concentrate on having sensations; for example, a sensation of
pain. We see a heavy object fall on someone' s foot. We see him
turn pale, grimace, cry out, clutch his foot, jump up and down, call
for help, and limp about. He is obviously feeling pain. But what is
it to feel pain? On the third-person account it is just to behave in
some
difficulties in
the
Consciousness
24
explained in terms of behavior or dispositions to behave; and there
are those who will say that its meaning can be given only by an introspective examination conducted by the person who himself is in
that state. So whether the thesis is true or false, it does not help us
settle between the two accounts we are here exploring.
It is a crucial part of the first-person account that we must
learn what states of consciousness are, what expressions referdefinition
ring to states of consciousness mean, by what is sometimes
called private ostensive definition.
An "ostensive definition" consists in explaining the meaning of
an expression to someone by giving him a series of examples of the
things to which the expression refers. To explain to someone what
color-words like "red," "green," and "yellow," mean, we would give
him examples of red, green, and yellow things until he caught on to
the meanings of these terms. It is frequently held, and most plausi
bly, too, that it is only by means of ostensive definition that the
meanings of such expressions can be learned; it would be most unlikely, to say the least, that a person who had never seen colored
objects (for example, a person blind from birth) would know fully
what color-words mean. I say "fully" because it is possible that a
congenitally blind person have some grasp of the meaning. He may
know the grammar of such words, use them correctly in many situations, and even have some idea of their content. John Locke tells
the following story:.
The private
ostensive
I
A studious blind man, who had mightily beat his head about
visible objects, and made use of the explication of his books and
friends to understand those names of light and colours which often
came in his way, bragged one day, that he now understood what
scarlet signified. Upon which his friend demanding, what scarlet
was? The blind man answered, It was like the sound of a trumpet. 7
Now that is not bad, considering the man was blind. But if it is the
best he could do, then it is still a long way from understanding the
meaning of "scarlet." And Locke himself, a leading spokesman for
the first-person account, concluded that until the man actually experiences scarlet, he can never come to understand the meaning of
the word.
A supporter of the first-person account holds that at least some
sensation-words must be learned by ostensive definition, by being
7
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, III, iv, 11.
Consciousness
25
presented with examples of particular sensations. But examples of
someone else's sensation are inadequate for learning the meanings
of these words. The person himself must have the sensation. A person who, for example, never had experienced pain (there are people
with abnormal nervous systems that render them incapable of feeling pain; their lives are filled with danger because of it) would not
fully understand expressions like "pain," "ache," or "twinge" on this
account. He would presumably know that they dispose people to
behave in certain ways, and so he would have the kind of understanding of these expressions that the third-person account supplies.
But this would be an inadequate understanding, as we noted when
we considered the difficulties in the third-person account.
Since the person himself must experience the sensation, to
come to learn the full meaning of the sensation-word, the example
he is presented with is not one that another could use for learning
the full meaning. It is a "private" example, and the ostensive definition is a "private" ostensive definition. On the first-person account,
this element of "privacy" is an essential part of the meanings of
sensation-words. The situation is quite different for words like
"curved" or "horse"; the referents of these words are public in that
more than one person could observe the referents and use them to
learn the meanings of those words. But if a person feels pain, only he
can have that feeling; others may feel their own pain, but they cannot feel his. They may be able to tell from the situation and his
behavior that he is in pain, but they cannot tell by feeling his pain.
His pain is private to himself; no one else can feel it. Anything any
other person feels will be that other person's feeling.
An
The presence of this important element, the private ostensive
definition, in the first-person account has prompted a serious
objection to that account, raised by the late Ludwig Wittgenstein
and his followers. Wittgenstein argued that if one holds that the
initial application of expressions involving consciousness is to oneself, if one learns the meanings of these expressions by a private
ostensive definition, then insoluble difficulties arise concerning the
application of such expressions to others.
Two such difficulties are these. First, there is the problem of
verification; namely, could we ever have any grounds for applying
them to others? After all, we can never observe another's inner sensation; we can do that only in our own case. All we can observe, so
far as others are concerned, is their outward behavior. So could we
ever be entitled to say of another that he has the inner sensation?
objection
26
Consciousness
This is a particular case of the general problem known as the problem of other minds: how can I know, or even have the slightest reason to believe, that inner states of what I know as consciousness in
my own case ever occur in any case other than my own? We shall
consider this problem later on, but it can be said at this point that it
is a most difficult problem, and none of the proposed solutions turns
out to be very satisfactory.
But there is another problem here concerning how such expressions, which get their meanings from what I experience in my
own case, could apply to others. This is not the problem of verification, but the prior problem of meaning. How could it be even
intelligible to attribute that which I feel to another? Suppose I am
to attribute a pain in the foot to that man. On the first-person account
it would be to attribute to that foot what I feel in my own case. But
what is such an attribution? Is it to assert the existence of a pain that
I feel but that is somehow located in that foot over there? If so, it
would be a case in which I feel a pain in someone else's foot. But
that is obviously not what is meant when I attribute a pain in the
foot to that man. I must attribute to that foot a pain which is like
what I feel but which is not felt by me at all. And if what I experience in my own case is so essentially something felt by me, how can
I understand an expression that attributes a sensation to another~
in which that something felt by me is claimed to be something
not felt by me at all? If, by "in pain," I mean something felt by me,
how can I talk about pain (another's) not felt by me? 8
What is needed here is a distinction between my pain and
another person's pain. The first-person account does not allow for
such a distinction. Since the meaning of sensation words is given
by what I feel, a sensation that is somehow like what I feel but unfelt by me would be utterly impossible, on the first-person account.
If I learn that "pain" means this which is now felt, then if I feel no
pain, there is no pain at all to be felt, and that is the end of the
matter. The first-person account allows distinctions between different
sorts of sensations (e.g., tickles, itches, pains) and between past,
present, and future sensations (via memories and expectations), but
it does not allow a distinction between sensations that are mine
and sensations that are another's. And no private ostensive definition could be used to teach the distinction between my sensation
and another's.
One might be inclined to think that such a distinction would
8 This is pointed out by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations, trans.
G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953), sec. 302.
Consciousness
27
be easy to make. After all, it might be argued, if I know what pain
that I feel is, what could be easier to imagine than a pain that another feels? But this way of putting it conceals the basic difficulty.
For I do not learn the "my pain" vs. "his pain" contrast by attend·
ing to what happens in my own case. From my own case I learn only
such contrasts as "pain" vs. "tickle," on the one hand, and "pain"
vs. "no pain" on the other.
Since it is an essential part of our concepts of sensations and
of consciousness in general that it be intelligible to apply them to
others, we must conclude that the first-person account does not
succeed in explaining how we have such concepts and how the
words standing for such concepts come to be meaningful.
Because of this problem with the first-person account as well
as the problem of verification mentioned above, some philosophers
have said that when one attributes to oneself a state of consciousness, he attributes an inner state; but when one attributes to another
a state of consciousness, he attributes only behavior. Thus, when I
say of myself that I am in pain, I am attributing the sensation; but
when I say of another that he is in pain, I am attributing a disposition to display pain behavior; e.g., groaning, thrashing about, and
so on.
This compromise between the third-person account and the
first-person account is a desperate compromise indeed. For it asserts
a radical difference in the meaning of the expression "in pain" when
it occurs in "I am in pain" and in "He is in pain." But this is to
introduce intolerable complexities into the language. What are we
to make of "He and I [i.e., we] are in pain"? And when another says
of me, "He is in pain," and I "agree" with him that I am in pain,
what am I agreeing to, the ascription of the sensation or the ascription of a behavioral disposition? Similarly, when I say I am in pain,
and another believes what I say, how is he to express his belief and
what is he to mean by the words expressing that belief? Is his belief
about my inner sensation or my outer behavior?
So far as our language is concerned, at least, "in pain" is treated
as having the same meaning whether it is used to apply to oneself
or to another. When one reports the occurrence of a pain, whether
it is in oneself or in another, one intends to report the occurrence
of one and the same thing and one uses the expression "in pain" as
meaning one and the same thing. The question is, What is one to
mean, inner sensation or outer behavior?
On the first-person account, we end up meaning our own inner
sensations. Our problem has been how to attribute inner sensation
28
Consciousness
to second and third parties. We have considered the view that we
mean inner sensations in our own case but outward behavior in the
case of others, and we have found that it introduces an intolerable
asymmetry into our language, something to be avoided if possible.
To summarize so far, neither of the two accounts we have
examined gives an adequate account of consciousness, and yet
each brings out an important facet. The obvious solution is to
try to see what is true and correct in each of the two accounts, noticing that it is essential to the nature of consciousness that there be
both a first-person and a third-person aspect. The difficulty lies in
seeing how the two are related. In the main, this is the task of the
next chapter. But certain important relations can be pointed out
here without begging any of the issues of Chapter 3.
Let us consider how we learn and teach others to use expressions involving a reference to consciousness. I do not mean here to
get into questions of empirical psychology, questions concerning
how, in fact, children come to possess the ability to use these expressions. I mean to ask what sorts of thing would we call "teaching" and "learning" here. The following would be a case: The child
stubs his toe and cries; I say "It hurts, doesn't it?" The child says
"It hurts." Thereafter, when he stubs his toe, he says "It hurts."
I think we would all say that here is a case of teaching and learning
the meaning of the expression "It hurts." From the teacher's point
of view, what is essential is that there be ( 1) the causal conditions
of stubbing the toe and the behavioral response of crying and ( 2)
subsequent similar conditions and response plus the new behavior of
uttering the expression "It hurts." The first shows that it is an appropriate teaching situation, and the second shows that learning took
place. From the learner's point of view, what is essential is ( 1) that
he pick out the element in the situation referred to by "It hurts"
and ( 2) that he associate similar occurrences of that element with
the expression.
I think we would all agree that here is a case of teaching and
learning the meaning of the expression "It hurts." It must be noted,
however, that it is not inevitable that anything correct be taught and
learned in such a case. It is possible that the child might fail to pick
out the correct element in the situation referred to by "It hurts,"
even though he goes on to use the expression in the appropriate
future circumstances. It is possible, but it is not usual or typical of
these cases. If it did happen frequently that the person failed to
pick out the correct element and still did somehow go on to use the
A compromise
solution
Consciousness
29
expression in the appropriate circumstances, then this sort of case
would not be a case of teaching and learning the meaning of the
expression "It hurts." But it is a fact that typically the correct
element is picked out. And that is what makes it a case of teaching
and learning the meaning of the expression.
And now we can see how the third-person and first-person aspects of consciousness can be combined in a definition of consciousness. I suggest that we define an expression referring to some particular determination of consciousness-e.g., "pain" -in the following
way: it is that state which the subject usually notices to intervene
between particular causal conditions and particular behavioral effects. Here we have both aspects brought out in the two accounts
we have examined. ( 1) We have the causal conditions and the behavioral effects, which provide the publicly observable setting. They
allow us to specify the experience in public terms and to fix the
meanings in an interpersonal linguistic scheme, so that the application of these terms to others is both intelligible and verifiable. ( 2)
We have the private, inner experience, which is what actually is
noticed to intervene in these circumstances. This gives us the content of the expression. Without it, we are in the position of Locke's
"studious blind man"; he knew, as it were, the grammar or the use
of color-words but he did not know the content or meanings of such
words. The third-person account gives us, as it were, the addresses
of states of consciousness in logical space, and the first-person account reminds us that we must look in at the address to see who
lives there. We have a private, ostensive definition, but the directions for the ostensive definition are not private but public.
Analogies may mislead, but let me take that risk. Imagine that
a particular length, say one meter, is defined as "whatever is the
same length as a particular object, A, located in Paris." 9 That fixes
the meaning of "one meter," and, in a way, we understand something by the expression when we hear it. But we do not as yet know
how long a meter is and, therefore, do not fully understand the expression "one meter." When we are shown the object, A, or another
object the same length, only then do we fully understand the expression. I am contending that expressions referring to experiences
have the same feature.
Both third-person and first-person supporters have each seen
part of the whole story. The third-person account explains how :he
meanings of these expressions are determined or fixed or given a
location in the linguistic scheme, whereas the first-person account
9
I am grateful to Mr. Michael Dunn for this example.
30
Consciousness
brings out the content of these expressions. There could be no content for psychological expressions unless the meanings were fixed;
but without content there would be nothing to fix. Determinations
of consciousness are not dispositions to respond which arise under
certain conditions, as the behaviorist would have it, but they are by
definition and hence necessarily the private, inner occurrences which
usually go with those dispositions to respond.
Defenders of the third-person account might wish to raise some
objections at this point to try to remove the private, inner, knownfrom-my-own-case element from the account of sensation-words I
propose. The first is Wittgenstein's "beetle-in-the-box" objection.
If we can fix the meanings of sensation-words by means of certain
causal conditions (e.g., physical injury) and their effects (e.g., expression in behavior), then what point is there for the postulation of
an intervening something which is the alleged content of the sensation-word? What conceivable role could it play in the language?
Why should it not cancel out? 1o
Here one can only say that something does intervene, as the
experience of mankind will testify. Remember Locke's story: The
blind man did not get right what "scarlet" signifies, although he
might have come to know everything about the term that a thirdperson account could teach him.
Experience shows that something does intervene between
causal conditions and behavioral expression, but it must be admitted that experience does not show that this intervening something is what is meant by sensation-words. That is a philosophical
thesis. Yet it is a plausible thesis, for ( 1) as we have seen, the meaning of sensation-words cannot be analyzed merely in terms of prior
causes and subsequent effects, ( 2) it is precisely the occurrence of
this intermediary which accounts for why the sighted person can
learn the meanings of sensation-words and Locke's studious blind
man does not, and ( 3) the intermediary is the only way of accounting for the epistemological asymmetry of first- and third-person
reports.
The second objection comes from identity theorists (whose
views will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3). They would
probably accept everything I have said so far about sensations, adding only that the intervening state between physical cause and beIO "The thing in the box has no place in the language game at all; not even
as a something: for the box might even be empty.-No, one can 'divide through'
by the thing in the box: it cancels out, whatever it is." (Philosophical Investigations, sec. 293.)
Consciousness
31
havioral effect is a brain state (or, for some theorists, a state of the
entire nervous system). Thus J. J. C. Smart takes a report of a sensation to be of the form "Something is going on in me which is like
what [usually] goes on in me when . . . " where the "something"
is not further specified by the reporter but neurological investigation
will show it to be a brain state. Thus the referents of sensationwords are brain states. We are then left, essentially, with a thirdperson account.
My reply to this objection is as follows. If a person reports the
having of some sensation, and, particularly, in line with Smart's
suggestions, the having of something which is similar to what he has
had before, he must have noticed some occurrence or some feature
of some occurrence on the basis of which he makes his report. The
sighted person notices something on the basis of which he recognizes that the afterimage is scarlet, in contrast to Locke's blind man
who has not noticed any such feature. (Whether he could recognize something as scarlet immediately upon gaining his sight is the
problem raised by Locke's friend Mr. Molyneux.) Now what one
notices cannot, in the ordinary case, be said to be a neurological
feature. The reporter is not in a position to say anything at all about
the neurological features of the case, and it would be very odd to
hold that he did notice some neurological feature if he was not in
the slightest bit able to say anything at all about any neurological
aspects of the situation.
A third objection to the account I have given of sensationwords is this: Surely there are other, equally plausible ways of accounting for the first-person element without postulating an inner,
private experience. Consider the possibility of a person who can say
what time it is without looking at a timepiece. Let us assume that
he does not judge the time on the basis of some sensation but simply "guesses" what time it is and always gets it right. Could we not
think of one's reporting of one's sensations in this way, and thus
avoid postulating the inner experience? A person knows what sensation he has in the same way that our postulated time-knower knows
that it is nine o'clock immediately and without observation, and
yet without necessarily having a special, private nine o'clock feeling
on the basis of which he judges that it is nine o'clock. On this
account, sensation-reports are reports of what is public and observable
by anyone, but it turns out that people can be trained to make such
reports without resorting to observation of what is observable to
anyone.
But there is an important difference between the case of the
32
Consciousness
successful time-guesser and the person who reports having a sensation. The time of day is a fact establishable independently from the
fact that our time-guesser guesses it correctly; he could lose the knack
and have to go back to observing clocks. But it makes no sense to
say that a person could lose the knack of describing his sensations
without observing correctly and have to go back to observing his
behavior to tell his sensations. Reporting a sensation is not reporting
a public occurrence by some unusual, nonobservational method.
We can bring the case of the time-guesser closer to that of the
person who reports having a sensation. Let us make it impossible
for him to lose his knack. One way to do this is by making him, as it
were, the Standard Clock, so that whatever time he says it is, becomes the time it is. But then his declarations are no longer reports
which can be true or false; notice that he cannot even lie about the
time. So we are still a long way from the case of sensations. A more
interesting way of making it impossible for him to lose his knack
is to construe his declaration as a report of what time it feels to
him to be, e.g., that three-o'clock-in-the-morning feeling which characterizes Fitzgerald's "dark night of the soul." And now, of course,
we no longer have an assertion of an independently establishable
fact but the report of a sensation. So the analogy can no longer
serve to help us explain sensation-words. Yet another case would be
where the person simply reports his inclination to guess that it is
three o'clock. And such a report would also be like the report of a
sensation in some ways and unlike it in others.
Assuming that these objections have been met, a rather deep
and dark difficulty remains. If we insist on distinguishing between
the inner, private experience on the one hand, and its public causes
and behavioral consequences on the other, it would seem that the relation between them is purely contingent, that the inner experience
just happens to be preceded (usually) by public causes and effects;
for, after all, as Hume pointed out, temporally distinct events are
only contingently related. Yet do we not feel that there is more than
just a contingent, causal connection between, say, experiencing severe pain and having a tendency to grimace, cry out, writhe, etc.?
Could one really imagine that the world might have been quite
different, composed solely of people who had not the slightest tendency to behave in these ways when experiencing severe pain?
Could one really imagine that the world could have been made up
of people who behaved in these ways when injured but never felt
pain?
I will attempt, in a moment, to do justice to our feeling that
Consciousness
33
there is more than a merely contingent relation between inner experience and outer antecedents and consequences. But before I do
so, let me emphasize one point I have already argued for. There is
no logical connection between being in pain and its (usual) causal
antecedents and consequences. Neither one is logically necessary nor
sufficient for the other; each could occur without the other.
However, on the account I have given, we would not have the
concepts we do unless they did usually go together. For the concepts we have, if I am right, are ones in which a private ostensive
definition is given by public instructions-and if the inner experience
did not accompany the outer conditions, then no private ostensive
definition would occur, and thus our concept would be empty. That
our concepts have content results from a contingent fact. And that
our concepts have content entails that this contingent fact obtains.
So when we puzzle over how a world could have been composed of
people who felt pain but never expressed it or behaved as if in pain
but never felt pain, then the source of our puzzlement is the fact
that in such a world our concept of pain would have no application.
And if it had no application, it could not be said either that such
people felt pain or that they did not feel pain; so there could not
be such a world. But that does not show that there is a necessary
connection between pain and its causal surroundings. It simply shows
that a world in which the concept of pain does have application
could not be such a world. Nothing here said rules out that there
could be a tribe somewhere for whose members these causal conditions did not obtain. But they could not learn our concept of pain.
THE
SUB~ECT
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
It would seem to be an undeniable fact that consciousness does
exist and that any account of the world will have to give some place
to it. But what place? What is the relation of consciousness to
whatever else does exist? In particular, what is the relation of consciousness to the organic and inorganic matter that makes up so great
a part of the world? And, more particularly, what is the relation of
consciousness to those organic systems we know as human bodies?
This is the question which will occupy us in the next two chapters.
We can begin our inquiry by asking what is the subject of consciousness, in other words, what is conscious when consciousness
exists? Well, what sorts of things have consciousness? One pretty
indisputable case is that of men or human beings. But what is a man
or human being? Is he just a particular kind of matter formed in
a particular way? Or is there more to the story, and if so what more?
If a man is more than a particularly formed kind of matter, then
is it some part of that more which is the subject of consciousness?To make the discussion manageable, let us confine ourselves
to that form of consciousness which consists in having what I shall
call mental events: those particular occasions which consist in the
having of some thought, the feeling of some sensation, the imaging
of some mental picture, the entertaining of some wish, etc. Our
problem, then, will be to determine what it is that has the thought,
feels the sensation, images the mental picture, entertains the wish,
etc.
34
The Subject of Consciousness
35
The various theories concerning what has the mental events
fall into three basic categories. ( 1) There is the view that they happen to purely nonmaterial things. Proponents of such a view usually
admit the existence of purely material things in addition to these
purely nonmaterial things; hence they are called dualists. ( 2) There
is the view that they happen to purely material things; we shall call
this materialism. And ( 3) there is the view that they happen to
things which are neither purely material nor purely nonmaterial; we
shall call this the person theory. Each shall be considered and
evaluated in turn.
The most systematic dualistic theory is that which was presented by the French philosopher Descartes. He held that the
subject of consciousness is the mind and that the mind is a thing
or entity separate and distinct from the body. The body is a thing or
entity whose essence (defining characteristic) is occupying space, i.e.,
having shape, size, and location in space; and it is in no sense conscious. The mind, on the other hand, is completely different in its
nature. It is utterly nonspatial, having neither shape, size, nor location. Its essence (defining characteristic) is simply having consciousness, that is, thoughts, feelings, memories, perceptions, desires,
emotions, etc.
Descartes held that since the mind and the body are separate
entities, each can exist without the other. It is obvious and undeniable that Descartes is at least correct in holding that some bodiese.g., stones and lakes-do indeed exist without minds. Descartes
himself believed that animals (other than man) were also examples
of bodies without minds. Some people might disagree with him
there, and there would be even more disagreement with his thesis
that minds could exist without bodies. Descartes believed that minds
were immortal, that they continue to exist as disembodied minds
after the body has perished in death.
There is an important gap in Descartes' account, a gap which
can be noted in the summary just given. From the fact that the essence of the mind is one thing, having consciousness, and the essence
of the body is another, occupying space, it does not follow that the
mind and the body are two separate entities. What is to rule out the
possibility that one and the same thing can have both these properties, be both a thinking thing and at the very same timf' an extended thing? The essence, that is, the defining characteristic, of
being a husband is being a married man and the essence of being a
parent is having offspring, but one and the same person can be both
Dualism
36
The Subiect of Consciousness
a husband and a parent (and, obviously, can be one without being
the other). This gap in Descartes' reasoning was first pointed out by
Spinoza, who had been a follower of Descartes. Spinoza realized that
"although two attributes may be conceived as really distinct," and
here he has in mind thinking and extension, "we cannot nevertheless
thence conclude that they constitute two beings or two different
substances." 1 Then, breaking decisively with Descartes, Spinoza went
on to maintain that in the case of human beings (and, as a matter of
fact, for Spinoza, in everything else as well), both thinking and spaceoccupancy were characteristics of one and the same thing. This view
shall be discussed later under the heading of double aspect theory.
Nevertheless, Descartes held that one and the same thing could
not be both a space-occupier and a thinking thing. He seems to have
thought that these characteristics were simply so different in their
natures that one and the same thing could not have both. Thus he
cites the fact that extended things are divisible, whereas thinking
things are not divisible (see his sixth Meditation). But this is a very
weak line of argument. Since thinking and occupying space are different characteristics, there will naturally be differences between them.
Extended things will necessarily be divisible (I take it Descartes is
here thinking of spatially dividing something), and things which are
nonextended, say disembodied minds, will not be so divisible. But
that is just to say that we have different characteristics here. A thing
which thinks would be divisible if it were at the same time an extended thing. So pointing out differences between extension and
thinking does not show us that things which have the one characteristic cannot have the other. Perhaps Descartes had in mind the point
that extension and thinking are so very different, so basically different. Of course one object could be both red and round, he might
say, but could one object be both red and thinking? Here again, however, the line of argument is weak. Being red and being valuable and
being holy are very different sorts of properties, yet one and the same
object, say a particular jewel, might be all three. So we still do not
have a very good reason for thinking that thinking things could not
be extended and vice versa.
Even if the dualist fails to give us a reason for holding that
thinking things and extended things are different entities, still s~h a
view might be correct. And we have not yet seen any reason for thinking it is not correct. So let us, for the moment, grant the dualist his
claim that they arc different entities. If we do so, the question arises
how these two different entities are related to each other, if at all.
I
!
I
I
Ethics, Part I, Prop. X, note.
The Subiect of Consciousness
37
Here we find ourselves faced with what is traditionally known m
philosophy as the mind-body problem.
A full discussion of the mind-body problem will be reserved
for Chapter 4. But in order to get a better grasp of dualism
problem
we will here take a brief look at the various theories that have
been proposed. Descartes himself believed that sometimes the
mind could causally affect the body and sometimes the body could
causally affect the mind; this view is called interactionism. An
example of the former would be a case in which, after deliberation, I decide (a mental event) to press the button and then my
hand reaches out to press it (a bodily event); an example of the latter
would be a case in which the moving hand (a bodily event) comes
in contact with the button, causing in me a feeling of fear (a mental
event) at what will happen if I do press the button.
Interactionism is not the only dualistic theory of the relation
between mind and body. Some philosophers have held that there is
only one-way causality, from body to mind; this view is known as
epiphenomenalism. The epiphenomenalist accepts one half of the
interactionist contention, that part which holds that bodily events
can cause mental events. But he denies the other half; he denies that
mental events can ever cause bodily events. Whatever happens in
the mind is merely a by-product of bodily activity (most plausibly,
brain activity). No important philosopher has ever held what we
might call reverse epiphenomenalism, namely that bodily events are
always merely effects of mental activity. The religion of Christian
Science comes somewhat close to this view, holding that bodily
events, particularly those concerning health and disease, are results
of mental activity. Many Christian Scientists would go so far as to
maintain that all bodily events, for example the activity in our sense
organs during perception, are caused solely by mental activity. This
is the view of the eighteenth century Irish philosopher George
Berkeley, that anything that ever happens at all happens only in the
mind. Berkeley's view is no longer dualism; he holds that only minds
exist and that matter and in particular bodies do not exist at all,
except in the mind.
Finally, there is the dualist theory known as parallelism. The
parallelist admits the close connection of events in the mind and
events in the body, but does not wish to say that the connection is
a causal one, for he holds that the mind and the body are too utterly
different to be able to interact causally with each other. So the parallelist holds that the mind and the body are like two clocks, each
The traditional
mind-body
38
The Subiect of Consciousness
with its own mechanism and with no causal connection between
them, yet always in phase keeping the same time.
Dualist theories are not very much in favor these days. There
are two main sources of discontent with them. ( l) Many
philosophers have grave doubts that the notion of the mind as
a thing or entity can be rendered intelligible. ( 2) Even if it could
be made intelligible, the view of the world which results seems to
many unnecessarily complex. We will discuss these two sources of
discontent in order.
( l) Dualists tell us that in addition to the familiar objects of
everyday life, tables, rocks, hair, trees, clouds, air, in short material
things, there also exist things of a quite different kind-minds. These
minds are real things, real objects, real entities, but they are fundamentally different sorts of things from material things. Well then,
what is a mind? Is it a peculiar kind of stuff, immaterial matter, insubstantial substance, bodiless body? It is supposed to have no extension, that is, no shape, size, or capacity to occupy space; it is not
visible to the eye, tangible to the touch, nor is it visible under any
microscope however powerful, tangible to the most delicate of probing instruments. Perhaps the mind is like a gravitational, magnetic, or
electrical field? But it cannot be, for on the dualist's hypothesis the
mind is in no way physical; if it were like them, or like physical energy
of some sort, then it would be a physical phenomenon and we would
no longer be dualists. Yet if it is in no way like such things, in what
sense is the mind a thing at all? What meaning can we give to the
notion of the mind as an existent thing?
The problem comes out in two particular ways, in the problem
of identification and the problem of individuation. The former problem concerns how we can tell when we are in the presence of some
other mind A rather than B or even in the presence of any other
mind at all. Since, on the dualist account, another mind is not detectible by any observations we could make, it is impossible that we
should have any reason to think we could ever identify another mind
as mind A or B. So we could never justifiably believe we were, for
example, talking to someone. And a concept of a mind which made
it impossible justifiably to apply that concept to any other thing
would be utterly useless, even if intelligible.
The problem of individuation concerns what makes two minds
distinct, assuming there could be two distinct minds. One answer
might be that they have different mental histories, each having had
different mental events at certain times. But it seems perfectly in-
Oblectlons to
dualism
The Subiect of Consciousness
39
telligible to suppose that at some time we might have two distinct
minds with exactly the same history of mental events (each might
have grown up in exactly the same way). And, if this supposition of
two exactly similar minds is intelligible, then what would make them
two distinct minds rather than one and the same mind? The dualist
does not seem to have an answer. He must say they are distinct, and
yet he cannot say how or in what respect they differ. Does that make
any sense?
( 2) Even if we were able to give some meaning to the claim
that minds exist, many contemporary philosophers would reject the
claim that in fact minds do exist. They would make the remark
attributed to the French astronomer Laplace in reply to Napoleon's
question about the role of God in the system: said Laplace, "Sire, I
have no need of that hypothesis." Thus many philosophers would
argue that everything that happens in the world can be explained
without using the notion of minds, strictly on the basis of physical
phenomena and physical laws.
The view that minds do not exist at all and that only the physical exists is called materialism. We shall now turn to this view.
Materialism is one of the very oldest theories. It was a familiar
doctrine to the ancient Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries
B.C. The spokesman for this view, Democritus, held that nothing
exists but material atoms and the void and that everything in the
world is nothing but the interactions of these atoms as they move
through the void. Even the most complex behavior of human beings
can be resolved into interactions between the atoms. A modern materialist would allow a more complicated picture than "atoms and
the void." He would bring in subatomic particles and antiparticles,
electromagnetic waves, a relativized view of "the void," various kinds
of forces and energies, and the rest of the conceptual apparatus of
contemporary physics. But he would still hold that nothing exists
but such physical phenomena; if such terms as "thought," "feeling,"
"wish," etc., have any meaning at all, they must refer in the last
analysis to physical phenomena. So-called mental events are really
nothing but physical events occurring to physical objects.
We should, at the outset, distinguish materialism as characerized here from another doctrine which has already been mentioned, epiphenomenalism (see page 37, above). The latter is a
dualistic theory which allows that the mind is separate and distinct
from the body but also insists that the mind is utterly dependent
causally upon the body, that everything which happens in the mind
Materialism
40
I
'I
,I
The Subject of Consciousness
is a result of events in the body, and that the mind is utterly powerless to affect the body in any way. Such a view is often called materialistic, since it places the highest importance on the material
side of things. It is in this sense that Karl Marx was materialistic,
for he held that "conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of
men, appear at [the earliest] stage as the direct effiux of their material behavior." 2 Notice that Marx is not saying men's conceiving,
thinking, and mental intercourse are nothing but their material behavior. That would be materialism as here characterized. He is saying that they are the "effiux," i.e., a separate, nonmaterial outflow
which originates and derives from material behavior. Such a view is
not materialistic in our sense.
The materialist holds that nothing but the physical existsmatter, energy, and the void. But then what are thoughts, feelings,
wishes, and the other so-called mental phenomena? Here four different answers have been seriously proposed. The most radical view,
supported by very few, is that such terms have no real meaning at
all and should be dropped from the language. They represent an accretion to our language which was conceived in ignorance and superstition, nurtured by the vested interests of religion and the black
arts, and condoned by human lethargy. On this view, mentalistic
terms should be allowed to suffer the fate of the language of witchcraft and demonic possession. Let us call this the unintelligibility
thesis.
The unintelligibility thesis has not gained much support among
contemporary philosophers. In the first place, it is clear why notions
of witchcraft and demonic possession died out-it has been shown
pretty conclusively by science that no such phenomena in fact exist.
There might have been witches, and, in that case, there could have
been a science which studied them and the ways in which they
achieved their effects; but the evidence indicates that there are no
such things. But this is hardly the case with mentalistic terms. What
kind of discoveries could show that in fact there are no thoughts,
feelings, wishes, and the like? On the contrary, is it not as plain as
anything can be that there are such things? And, secondly, we could
not dispense with mentalistic terms, even if our theories told us it
was most desirable to do so, nor does it seem likely we will be able
to do for the foreseeable future. This is because we often want to tell
our thoughts, describe our feelings, express our wishes, and there is
no other way available of doing so than saying I just had the
2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: Inter·
national Publishers, 1947), p. 14.
The Subiect of Consciousness
41
thought ... , I feel ... , I wish .... To abandon such expressions
would be to impoverish our language to the point of bankruptcy.
Another materialistic reply to the question "What are thoughts,
feelings, wishes, and the like?" is called the avowal theory. This
theory allows that sentences like "I feel bored" have meaning all
right, but are not used to make statements, are not used to describe
or report or assert anything. They are simply bits of behavior, the
effects of certain inner (physical) conditions. If I yawn, twiddle my
thumbs, or say "Ho hum," I am not describing, reporting, or asserting anything; I am not making a statement which is either true
or false. The avowal theory takes "I feel bored" to be a (learned)
bit of behavior, like "Ho hum," which results from certain inner
(physical) conditions, and not a statement, description, report, or
assertion at all. And the same would go for utterances of the form
"I just had the thought that ... ," "I wish that . . . ," and the
like.
It cannot be denied that there is some truth in the avowal
theory. Certainly such utterances are sometimes used in this way,
as expressions of inner states-"! feel bored" is sometimes uttered
in the way that "God, I'm bored!" or even "Oh God, what boredom!"
is uttered, and it is clear at least in the latter case that no statement, description, report, or assertion is being made. Yet the avowal
theory falls down in two important respects. First, it is utterly implausible when applied to third-person statements, e.g., "He is
bored." In no way can such a remark be taken as the expression of
an inner state. Second, even in their first-person use, such utterances are often used merely to report or describe. If someone asks me
why I keep looking at my watch, I may say "Because I am bored,"
making a report which explains my behavior. Furthermore, I can use
such utterances to make false statements, as when I am lying. "Ho
hum" cannot be used to explain anything or to lie about anything.
So the avowal theory will not do.
Another materialistic account is to allow that expressions referring to thoughts, feelings, wishes, and the like have meaning, but
to insist that their meanings can be expressed in purely physicalistic terms. What physicalistic terms? The most plausible candidate
is the set of terms which refer to physical behavior. This account,
known as behaviorism, was discussed in Chapter 2 (see pages 15-21,
above).
This behavioristic version of materialism has had a strong appeal for philosophers over the years. In contrast with the unintelligibility thesis, it allows sentences containing mentalistic terms to
42
I
I
'
.I
I·
I I
,I
I
i!
:!
The Subject of Consciousness
have meaning, and, in contrast with the avowal theory, it allows
them to be either true or false in the situations in which they are
used. And by using the concept of disposition to behave, it allows
such sentences to be true even where the person is not at that moment behaving in any particular fashion. Yet by tying the meaning
to behavior the theory allows sentences with mentalistic terms to be
testable by observation in an open and public way. To determine
whether someone has a headache we only have to see if, under suitable conditions, he behaves in the appropriate ways.
This view, however, is open to a fundamental objection, as
we have already seen. No matter what sort of behavior or behavioral
dispositions we imagine as allegedly constituting a particular mental
event, we can always imagine just that behavior or those dispositions without that mental event. We can imagine that behavior as
coming from some other cause, or even as inexplicably spontaneous.
Therefore behavior and behavioral dispositions do not furnish an
exhaustive analysis of these mentalistic terms. There is something
left out by such accounts.
The last version of materialism we shall consider, and currently the most seriously discussed, is known as the identity theory.
It is the theory that thoughts, feelings, wishes, and the rest of socalled mental phenomena are identical with, one and the same thing
as, states and processes of the body (and, perhaps, more specifically,
states and processes of the nervous system, or even of the brain
alone). Thus the having of a thought is identical with having such
and such bodily cells in such and such states, other cells in other
states.
In one respect the identity theory and behaviorism are very
much alike. This comes out when we ask ourselves what the "dispositions" of the behavorist are. If an object has a "disposition,"
then it is in a particular state such that when certain things happen
to it, other things will happen to it. Thus if an object is brittle, it
is in a particular state such that when subject to a sudden force it
will shatter. And similarly dispositions of a body to behave in particular ways are states of that body. So it is fair to say that both
identity theorists and behaviorists identify the mental with bodily
states. But one important way in which they differ concerns how
those states are to be defined or characterized. As we have seen,
behaviorists wish to define those states in terms of what changes they
result in when certain specifiable conditions obtain. Identity theorrists wish to define them in terms of identifiable structures of the
body, ongoing processes and states of the bodily organs, and, in the
last analysis, the very cells which go to make up those organs.
The Subiect of Consciousness
43
There is another important respect in which the identity theory
differs from behaviorism. The behaviorist offered his notion of dispositions to behave in certain ways as an analysis of the very meaning of mentalistic terms. But the identity theorist grants that it is
wildly implausible to claim that what I mean when I say, for example, that I just had a particular thought is that certain events
were going on in my nervous system. For I have no idea what those
events are, nor does even the most advanced neurophysiologist at
the present time, and yet I know what I mean when I say I just had
a particular thought. So, since I know what I mean by those words,
I cannot mean by them something I know nothing about (viz.,
unknown events in my nervous system). Hence the identity theory
is not intended to be an analysis of the meanings of mentalistic
terms as behaviorism purports to be. What, then, is the theory that
mental phenomena are "identical" with the body intended to be?
The sense of "identity" relevant here is that in which we say,
for example, that the morning star is "identical" with the evening
star. It is not that the expression "morning star" means the same as
the expression "evening star"; on the contrary, these expressions
mean something different. But the object referred to by the two
expressions is one and the same; there is just one heavenly body,
namely, Venus, which when seen in the morning is called the morning star and when seen in the evening is called the evening star.
The morning star is identical with the evening star; they are one
and the same object.
Of course, the identity of the mental with the physical is not
exactly of this sort, since it is held to be simultaneous identity rather
than the identity of a thing at one time with the same thing at a
later time. To take a closer example, one can say that lightning is a
particularly massive electrical discharge from one cloud to another
or to the earth. Not that the word "lightning" means "a particularly
massive electrical discharge ... "; when Benjamin Franklin discovered that lightning was electrical, he did not make a discovery
about the meaning of words. Nor when it was discovered that water
was H 2 0 was a discovery made about the meanings of words; yet
water is identical with H 2 0.
In a similar fashion, the identity theorist can hold that
thoughts, feelings, wishes, and the like are identical with physical
states. Not "identical" in the sense that mentalistic terms are synonymous in meaning with physicalistic terms but "identical" in the sense
that the actual events picked out by mentalistic terms are one and
the same events as those picked out by physicalistic terms.
It is important to note that the identity theory does not have
44
The Subject of Consciousness
a chance of being true unless a particular sort of correspondence
obtains between mental events and physical events, namely, that
whenever a mental event occurs, a physical event of a particular
sort (or at least one of a number of particular sorts) occurs, and
vice versa. If it turned out to be the case that when a particular
mental event occurred it seemed a matter of chance what physical
events occurred or even whether any physical event at all occurred,
or vice versa, then the identity theory would not be true. So far as
our state of knowledge at the present time is concerned, it is still
too early to say what the empirical facts are, although it must be
said that many scientists do believe that there exists the kind of
correspondences needed by identity theorists. But even if these
correspondences turn out to exist, that does not mean that the identity theory will be true. For identity theorists do not hold merely
that mental and physical events are correlated in a particular way
but that they are one and the same events, i.e., not like lightning
and thunder (which are correlated in lawful ways but not identical)
but like lightning and electrical discharges (which always go together because they are one and the same).
What are the advantages of the identity theory? As a form of
materialism, it does not have to cope with a world which has in it
both mental phenomena and physical phenomena, and it does not
have to ponder how they might be related. There exist only the
physical phenomena, although there do exist two different ways of
talking about such phenomena: physicalistic terminology and, in at
least some situations, mentalistic terminology. We have here a
dualism of language, but not a dualism of entities, events, or properties.
But we do have merely a dualism of languages and no other
sort of dualism? In the case of Venus, we do indeed have only
theory
one object, but the expression "morning star" picks out one
phase of that object's history, where it is in the mornings, and
the expression "evening star" picks out another phase of that object's
history, where it is in the evenings. If that object did not have these
two distinct aspects, it would not have been a discovery that the
morning star and the evening star were indeed one and the same
body, and, further, there would be no point to the different ways
of referring to it.
Now it would be admitted by identity theorists that physicalistic and mentalistic terms do not refer to different phases in the
history of one and the same object. What sort of identity is intended?
some difficulties
in the identity
The Subject of Consciousness
45
Let us turn to an allegedly closer analogy, that of the identity of
lightning and a particular sort of electrical phenomenon. Yet here
again we have two distinguishable aspects, the appearance to the
naked eye on the one hand and the physical composition on the
other. And this is also not the kind of identity which is plausible for
mental and physical events. The appearance to the naked eye of a
neurological event is utterly different from the experience of having
a thought or a pain.
It is sometimes suggested that the physical aspect results from
looking at a particular event "from the outside," whereas the mental
results from looking at the same event "from the inside." When the
brain surgeon observes my brain he is looking at it from the outside, whereas when I experience a mental event I am "looking" at
my brain "from the inside."
Such an account gives us only a misleading analogy, rather
than an accurate characterization of the relationship between the
mental and the physical. The analogy suggests the difference between
a man who knows his own house from the inside, in that he is free
to move about within, seeing objects from different perspectives,
touching them, etc., but can never get outside to see how it looks
from there, and a man who cannot get inside and therefore knows
only the outside appearance of the house, and perhaps what he can
glimpse through the windows. But what does this have to do with
the brain? Am I free to roam about inside my brain, observing what
the brain surgeon may never see? Is not the "inner" aspect of my
brain far more accessible to the brain surgeon than to me? He has
the X rays, probes, electrodes, scalpels, and scissors for getting at the
inside of my brain. If it is replied that this is only an analogy, not
to be taken literally, then the question still remains how the mental
and the physical are related.
Usually identity theorists at this point flee to even vaguer
accounts of the relationship. They talk of different "levels of analysis," or of different "perspectives," or of different "conceptual
schemes," or of different "language games." The point of such suggestions is that the difference between the mental .and the physical
is not a basic, fundamental, or intrinsic one, but rather a difference
which is merely relative to different human purposes or standpoints.
The difference is supposed to exist not in the thing itself but in the
eye of the beholder.
But these are only hints. They do not tell us in precise and
literal terms how the mental and the physical differ and are related.
They only try to assure us that the difference does not matter to the
46
• i
,,1
•I
The Subject of Consciousness
real nature of things. But until we are given a theory to consider, we
cannot accept the identity theorists' assurance that some theory will
do only he does not know what it is.
One of the leading identity theorists, J. J. C. Smart, holds that
mentalistic discourse is simply a vaguer, more indefinite way of
talking about what could be talked about more precisely by using
physiological terms. If I report a red afterimage, I mean (roughly)
that something is going on which is like what goes on when I really
see a red patch. I do not actually mean that a particular sort of
brain process is occurring, but when I say something is going on
I refer (very vaguely, to be sure) to just that brain process. Thus the
thing referred to in my report of an afterimage is a brain process.
Hence there is no need to bring in any nonphysical features. Thus
even the taint of dualism is avoided.
Does this ingenious attempt to evade dualistic implications
stand up under philosophical scrutiny? I am inclined to think it will
not. Let us return to the man reporting the red afterimage. He was
aware of the occurrence of something or other, of some feature or
other. Now it seems to me obvious that he was not necessarily
aware of the state of his brain at that time (I doubt that most of
us are ever aware of the state of our brain) nor, in general, necessarily aware of any physical features of his body at that time. He
might, of course, have been incidentally aware of some physical feature but not insofar as he was aware of the red afterimage as such.
Yet he was definitely aware of something, or else how could he have
made that report? So he must have been aware of some nonphysical
feature. That is the only way of explaining how he was aware of
anything at all.
Of course, the thing that our reporter of the afterimage was
aware of might well have had further features which he was not
aware of, particularly, in this connection, physical features. I mav
be aware of certain features of an object without being aware of
others. So it is not ruled out that the event our reporter is aware of
might be an event with predominantly physical features-he just
does not notice those. But he must be aware of some of its features,
or else it would not be proper to say he was aware of that event .
And if he is not aware of any physical features, he must be aware of
something else. And that shows that we cannot get rid of those
nonphysical features in the way that Smart suggests.
One would not wish to be dogmatic in saying that identity
theorists will never work out this part of their theory. Much work
is being done on this problem at the present time, for it arises in
The Subiect of Consciousness
47
other areas of philosophy as well as in the philosophy of mind. In
particular philosophers of science are concerned with the problem.
We saw that the identity theory used such analogies as the identity
of lightning with electrical phenomena and the identity of water
with molecules consisting of hydrogen and oxygen. But the question
to be raised is what kind of identity we are dealing with in such
cases. Do we have mere duality of terms in these cases, duality of
features, properties, or aspects, or even duality of substances? Very
similar issues arise. So it is quite possible that further work on this
problem of identity will be useful in clarifying the identity theory
of the mental and the physical. But at the present the matter is by
no means as clear as it should be.
Even if the identity theorist could clarify the sense of "identity" to be used in his theory, he would still face two other problems. These concern coexistence in time and space. Coexistence in
time and space are conditions that must be met if there is to be identity. That is to say, for two apparently different things to turn out
to be one and the same, they must exist at the same time and in
the same location. If we could show that Mr. A existed at a time
when Mr. B did not, or that Mr. A existed in a place where Mr. B
did not, then this would show that Mr. A and Mr. B were different
men. It is by virtue of these facts about identity that an alibi can
exonerate a suspect: if Mr. A was not in Chicago at the time, then
he could not be one and the same with the man who stole the
diamonds in Chicago.
So if mental events are to be identical with physical events,
then they must fulfill the conditions of coexistence in time and
space. The question is, Do they?
So far as coexistence in time is concerned, very little is known.
The most relevant work consists in direct stimulation of an exposed part of the brain during surgery. Since only a local anesthetic
is necessary in many such cases the patient may well be fully conscious. Then, as the surgeon stimulates different parts of his brain,
the patient may report the occurrence of mental events-memories,
thoughts, sensations. Do the physical events in the brain and the
mental events occur at precisely the same time? It is impossible to
say. All that would be required is a very small time gap to prove
that the physical events were not identical with the mental events.
But it is very difficult to see how the existence of so small a time
gap could be established. And even if it were, what would it prove?
Only that the mental event was not identical with just that physical
event; it would not prove it was nonidentical with any physical
48
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The Subiect of Consciousness
event. So it could well be that coexistence in time is present or is
not. I do not think that we shall get much decisive information
from empirical work of the sort here described. The identity theorist, then, does not have to fear refutation from this quarter, at least
not for a long time.
How about coexistence in space? Do mental events occur in
the same place the corresponding physical events occur? This is
also a very difficult question to answer, for two reasons. First our
present ignorance of neurophysiology, especially concerning the brain
and how it functions, allows us to say very little about the location
of the relevant physical events. This much does seem likely: they
are located in the brain. Much more than that we do not at present
know, although as the time passes, we should learn much more. The
second reason for our difficulty in telling if there is coexistence in
space has to do with the location of mental events. Where do
thoughts, feelings, and wishes occur? Do they occur in the brain?
Suppose you suddenly have the thought that it is almost suppertime; where does that occur? The most sensible answer would be
that it occurs wherever you are when you have that thought. If you
are in the library when you have that thought, then the thought
occurs in the library. But it would be utterly unnatural to ask where
inside your body the thought occurred; in your foot, or your liver,
or your heart, or your head? It is not that any one of these places is
more likely than another. They are all wrong. Not because thoughts
occur somewhere else within your body than your foot, liver, heart,
or head-but because it makes no sense at all to locate the occurrence
of a thought at some place within your body. We would not understand someone who pointed to a place in his body and claimed that
it was there that his entertaining of a thought was located. Certainly,
if one looked at that place, one would not see anything resembling
a thought. If it were replied to this that pains can be located in the
body without being seen there, then it should be pointed out that
one feels the pain there but one hardly feels a t!lought in the body.
The fact that it makes no sense at all to speak of mental events
as occurring at some point within the body has the result that the
identity theory cannot be true. This is because the corresponding
physical events do occur at some point within the body, and if
those physical events are identical with mental events, then those
mental events must occur at the same point within the body. But
those mental events do not occur at any point within the body, because any statement to the effect that they occurred here, or there,
would be senseless. Hence the mental events cannot meet the condi-
The Subiect of Consciousness
49
tion of coexistence in space, and therefore cannot be identical with
physical events.
Our inability to give the location within the body of mental
events is different from our inability to give the location of the corresponding physical events within the body. In the latter case, it is
that we do not know enough about the body, particularly the
brain. Some day, presumably, we will know enough to pin down
pretty exactly the location of the relevant physical events. But in the
case of mental events it is not simply that at present we are ignorant
but that someday we may well know. What would it be like to
discover the location of a thought in the brain? \Vhat kind of information would we need to be able to say that the thought occurred
exactly here? If by X rays or some other means we were able to see
every event which occurred in the brain, we would never get a
glimpse of a thought. If, to resort to fantasy, we could so enlarge a
brain or so shrink ourselves that we could wander freely through the
brain, we would still never observe a thought. All we could ever
observe in the brain would be the physical events which occur in it.
If mental events had location in the brain, there should be some
means of detecting them there. But of course there is none. The
very idea of it is senseless.
Some identity theorists believe this objection can be met. One
approach is to reply that this objection begs the question: if the
identity theory is true, and mental events are identical with brain
events, then, paradoxical as it may sound, mental events do indeed
have location, and are located precisely where the physical events are
located. Another approach is to reply that the relevant physical
events should be construed as events which happen to the body as a
whole, and therefore occur where the body as a whole is located; then
it is not so paradoxical to give location to the mental events, for they
would be located where the body is located but would not be
located in any particular part of the body.
We have carried our discussion of the identity theory to the
very frontier of present philosophical thinking. We can only leave it
to the reader to decide how well it can meet the objections which are
raised to it.
There is a mixed theory which is relevant at this point. A person
might hold that, although mental and physical events are different
sorts of events and in no sense identical, nevertheless the subjects to
which they both occur are material objects. Thus we have a theory
which preserves materialism so far as the subject of these events is
concerned, but represents an important departure from materialism
50
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The Subiect of Consciousness
in accepting a dualism of events, the existence of nonmaterial events
which happen to material objects in addition to the material events
which happen to them.
It would be a mere verbal evasion at this point to argue that
so-called mental events are really physical, in this mixed theory,
since they occur to physical objects. What would have to be faced
is the fact that thoughts, feelings, wishes, and the like are happenings of a quite different sort from the changes in size, shape, location,
charge, spin, energy level, etc., which are countenanced in present
physical theory. And if we did find even more occult and unfamiliar
sorts of physical events, we would still have to face the question
whether these events are identical with thoughts, feelings, etc. And
any attempt to argue for identity would face all the problems we
have already observed to arise for the identity theory.
If we were to accept a dualism of events, then to that extent
we would be abandoning materialism. We would be admitting that
what exists is not merely or purely or wholly material. Objects would
have a nonmaterial dimension; they would be subject to nonmaterial
happenings and nonmaterial states. To that extent, objects would
not be merely material in nature. On the other hand, there would be
no merely or purely or wholly nonmaterial objects which were sub
jects of mental events either. So we would not be back in a fullfledged dualism either. The kind of theory we would have is a
neutralist theory: what at the beginning of this chapter we called
the person theory. It is time we turned to a full examination of that
theory.
We have considered the view that mental events happen to
purely immaterial substances and the view that so-called mental
events are physical events which happen to purely material
substances. We have seen both advantages and disadvantages in each
of these main lines of approach. Dualism does justice to what we
take to be the wide gulf between the conscious, on the one hand,
and matter on the other, but at the expense of introducing the very
mysterious notion of the purely thinking substance. Materialism
dispenses with such a notion, but at the expense of obliterating what
we take to be an ineradicable gulf between the conscious and matter. We will shortly look at a recent attempt to find a compromise
between these two theories. We will call it the person theory. It is
the view that mental events happen neither to purely immaterial
substances nor to purely material substances, but to some thing
which is neither immaterial nor material; let us call them persons.
A double aspect
account
The Sub;ect of Consciousness
51
Mental events happen to persons, and persons are subject to both
mental and material happenings.
The historical ancestor of the person theorist is Spinoza, the
Dutch philosopher of the seventeenth century. Confronted on the
one side by the English materialist Hobbes and on the other side by
the French dualist Descartes, Spinoza said, in effect, a plague on both
your houses. The mental and the physical are both of them simply
aspects of something which in itself is neither mental nor physical.
A man can equally well be considered as an extended, physical thing
or as a thinking thing, although each of these characterizations only
brings out one aspect of the man. The analogy has been proposed of
an undulating line which at a given moment may be concave from
one point of view and convex from the other. The line itself is not
completely described by either term, but only by the use of both
terms. Yet it is not that there are two different things, one concave
and the other convex. There is only one thing which is, from one
point of view, concave and, from another point of view, convex. So
with man. He is both a thinking thing and an extended, physical
thing-not that he is two things but rather that he is one thing with
these two aspects. Such a view is traditionally known as a double
aspect view. It is like some versions of the identity theory, but, at least
in Spinoza's case, differs with respect to the conception of the thing
that has the two aspects. For Spinoza what has the two aspects is not
material (nor is it mental either), whereas for the identity theory as
we have discussed it what has the two aspects is material.
Although we cannot examine the details of Spinoza's theory,
we might note that Spinoza believed everything which existed had
these two aspects. This view is called panpsychism. It is the view
that consciousness occurs wherever anything exists and thus that every
tree, rock, cloud, and even every atom is conscious to some degree.
To be sure, Spinoza did not believe that all things had so fully
developed a consciousness as man has; presumably a rock's mind
is so crude and inferior that it is only barely conscious at all. Still,
for Spinoza, it is conscious to some degree.
For a double aspect theory, there are two issues of crucial
importance-what is the nature of the underlying stuff which has
the aspects, and what exactly are "aspects"? Unfortunately in Spinoza's theory both of these are left in deep obscurity. Each man, and,
in fact, everything else that exists, is just a particular instance or
specimen of what Spinoza calls "Substance" and also calls "God"
or "Nature." But it is very difficult to understand what this stuff is.
An indication of the difficulty is that since Spinoza's time there
The Subiect of Consciousness
52
has been an unending controversy whether Spinoza was an atheist
or what one commentator called "a God-intoxicated man." If an
issue so general as that cannot be settled, then it is unlikely that we
can hope for much clarification about the nature of this underlying
stuff. The second question, What is an "aspect"?, is equally important to answer, for we do not know what it means to say that
the mental and the physical are "aspects" of the same thing until
we know what an "aspect" is. Again, Spinoza is not of much help.
In his theory, the mental and the physical are both basic attributes
of the underlying stuff but he never says how they are related or,
indeed, how one and the same thing could have such different attributes. As we saw in our discussion of the identity theory (see p.
45), it is very difficult to explain with any precision in what sense
the mental and the physical are "aspects." The suggestion, by analogy with perception, is that they are different appearances of the
thing, the thing as seen from different points of view, but when we
try to replace the analogy with a literal characterization, we find
ourselves unable to say very much.
The person
theory
In recent philosophy, a modified version of the double aspect
theory which we will call the person theory has been presented
by P. F. Strawson. 3 It is the view that the mental and the
physical are both of them attributes of persons; the person is the
underlying entity which has both mental and physical attributes.
Thus we could say of the person that he is six feet tall, weighs one
hundred and seventy-five pounds, is moving at the rate of three
miles an hour (all physical attributes), and we could also say of
the very same entity, that person, that he is now thinking about a
paper he is writing, feels a pang of anxiety about that paper, and
then wishes it were already over and done with (all mental attributes). We have here neither attributions to two different subjects,
a mind and a body (dualism), nor attributions to a body ( materialism), but attributions to a person. We may say that the person
has a mind and a body, but all that means is that both mental and
physical attributes are applicable to him.
Why does Strawson reject materialism and hold that mental
states must be attributed to a person rather than to a body? His
argument is very difficult to grasp but it appears to be as follows. 4
Unless we are to accept the unintelligibility thesis or the avowal
theory (see pp. 40-41, above)-theories which Strawson rejects as too
3
4
P. F. Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1959), Chapter 3.
Ibid., pp. 9 5-98.
..
-
The Subiect of Consciousness
53
paradoxical to consider-we must admit that we often do ascribe
states of consciousness to things; e.g., we say of some particular subject that the subject had a headache. Now Strawson wishes to argue
that the notion of attributing a state of consciousness to a subject
cannot be analyzed as the notion of attributing a state of consciousness to a body. Consider the epiphenomenalist, who claims that to
say "Subject A has a headache" is synonymous with saying "Body a
is producing a headache." Now the epiphenomenalist would grant
that this contention-that all of subject A's headaches are produced
by body a-is controversial, and that some argumentation is needed.
But what exactly is the contention? It is not that all headaches are
produced by body a. That is obviously false. Only subject A's headaches are produced by body a. But if "Subject A has a headache"
is synonymous with "Body a is producing a headache," then to say
"All subject A's headaches are produced by body a" is simply to say
"All the headaches produced by body a are produced by body a."
And that is a claim about which controversy would be impossible,
since it is an utter tautology. Exactly the same reasoning would be
directed by Strawson against the kind of materialism which holds
that "Subject A has a headache" means "Body a has a headache."
Strawson's point, if we are interpreting him properly, is that in
order for materialists and epiphenomenalists even to formulate their
claim, they must have a concept of a subject of mental states
which is different from the concept of a material body. For they
wish to single out sets of mental states and go on to make
the nontrivial claim about each of those sets that it is dependent
upon some particular body. So they cannot use the body to single
out the sets. Hence, their notion of a subject of states of consciousness must be different from their notion of a material body. Otherwise their claim degenerates into the triviality that all those states
of consciousness dependent upon a body are dependent upon that
body, a claim too empty to be worth asserting.
I believe that this argument is sound. But it is important to
note what it does and does not establish. It establishes the logical
distinctness of subjects of consciousness and bodies. That is to say,
it establishes that expressions referring to the one cannot mean
the same as expressions referring to the other; they cannot be synonymous; the one cannot be analyzed in terms of the other. But
the argument does not rule out some form of the identity theory,
i.e., the claim that the entities which exemplify the one set of expressions are one and the same as the entities which exemplify the
1
54
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I
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The Subject of Consciousness
other. 5 Even if the expression "subject of consciousness" does not
mean a body of a certain sort, it still might turn out that whatever
is a subject of consciousness is identical with a body of a certain
sort. We shall return to this issue shortly.
In rejecting the logical identity of persons (i.e., subjects of
consciousness) and bodies, Strawson might be suspected of accepting dualism. But this would be a mistake. Strawson also rejects dualism, at least in the Cartesian form we have discussed it above; he
rejects the view that the subject of states of consciousness is a wholly
immaterial, nonphysical thing, a thing to which nothing but states
of consciousness can be ascribed. His argument is as follows. 6 If
someone has the concept of a subject of consciousness, then he must
be willing to allow that there could be other subjects than himself,
i.e., that he might be only one self among many. To have the concept of other subjects of consciousness is to be able to distinguish
one from another, pick out or identify different subjects, be able to
say on some occasions at least that here is one subject rather than
another. (If one had no idea how to distinguish one subject from
another, then one would not have the concept of different subjects.)
Now if other subjects of consciousness were wholly immaterial, then
there would be no way of distinguishing one subject from another
-how could we possibly tell how many such subjects were around
us right now or which subject was which? And if there was no way
of distinguishing one subject from another, then, as was just pointed
out, one would not have the concept of other subjects. And therefore, as was pointed out at the beginning of this argument, one
would not have the concept of a subject of consciousness at all. So
the Cartesian concept of the subject as wholly immaterial is without meaning.
Therefore, if we do have a concept of a subject of consciousness, as we surely do, then it can be neither merely the concept of
a body (as materialism holds) nor merely the concept of an immaterial thing (as the dualist holds). It must be the concept of an entity to which both physical and mental attributions can be made.
That is to say, this subject must be not only conscious but physical
as well. Strawson calls entities which admit of both mental and
physical attributes persons.
The person theory has very attractive features. It gives full
weight to the distinction between mental and physical attributes,
allowing them to be attributes of basically different natures. Yet it
5See James W. Cornman, "Strawson's 'Person,"' Theoria, XXX (1964),
146-47.
6 Individuals, pp. 99-104.
The Subiect of Consciousness
55
also does justice to the fact that they seem to be attributes of one
and the same subject; we say, "As he fell through space, he wondered if the parachute would ever open," not "As his body fell through
space, his mind wondered if the parachute would ever open." Nor
do we seem committed to that curious entity, the immaterial, extensionless thinking substance of Descartes' dualism.
And yet, alas, there are difficulties with the person theory.
These begin to emerge when we begin probing deeper into the
concept of the person which is involved here. Strawson
defines "person" very simply, as "a type of entity such that both
predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing
corporeal characteristics, a physical situation, etc. are equally applicable to a single individual of that single type." 7 But such a definition
does not help us very much. That it does not comes out when we ask
how the person theory differs from the identity theory.
Identity theorists wish to say that mental attributes are attri·
butes of bodies. Furthermore, most of them wish to say that in some
sense the mental attributes are reducible to physical attributes. Not
all hold to the latter thesis, however. Herbert Feigl holds that where
mentalistic terms are appropriate the basic and underlying reality is
mental and physicalistic terms refer to this mental reality. 8 Thus
Feigl seems to admit a dualism of attributes, mental and physical.
Yet his is an identity theory both in the sense that the basic subjects of consciousness are bodies and in the sense that certain mentalistic and physicalistic terms have one and the same referent (although some of these terms will have a mental referent). Now
Strawson would certainly reject the contention that mental attributes are reducible in any sense to physical attributes. But would
he reject the claim that they are attributes of bodies? Does he wish
to say that persons are bodies of a certain sort, namely bodies which
have mental attributes as well?
It is clear that Strawson holds persons to be things which have
bodily attributes. But that does not make them bodies any more
than the fact that something has red in it makes it red. For, unlike
ordinary bodies, persons are things which have mental attributes as
What Is a
person?
Ibid., p. 102.
Feigl, "The 'Mental' and the 'Physical,'" Minnesota Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, Vol. II (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
19 58), pp. 474-7 5. The essay has recently been reprinted, under the same title, as
a separate monograph (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967); a
postscript contains Feigl's most recent thoughts on this matter. See also Feigl's
contribution to Sidney Hook, ed., Dimensions of Mind (New York: Collier
Books, 1961): "Mind-Body, Not a Pseudo-problem," pp. 33-44.
7
B Herbert
'i
:r
I
I
56
The Subject of Consciousness
well. Furthermore, for Strawson it is not the case that persons are
things which just happen to have bodily attributes (but might not
have had them), nor is it the case that they are things which just
happen to have mental attributes (but might not have had them).
It is essential to persons, on Strawson's conception of them, that
they be entities which necessarily have both mental and bodily
attributes. And that means that they are things which differ essentially from bodies (which have only bodily attributes necessarily).
They are different types of stuffs or substances or entities. And
therefore the person theory is fundamentally different from materialism of any sort. It is dualistic in holding that there are two different types of subjects in the natural world, physical bodies and persons. Physical bodies necessarily have solely the physical dimension;
persons necessarily have two dimensions, a physical and a mental
dimension. It is the latter contention which distinguishes it from
Spinoza's double aspect theory; for Spinoza, everything which exists
in the world is, in Strawson's sense, a person, i.e., a thing which
necessarily has both a mental and a physical dimension.
If we cannot say, on the person theory, that a person is a body,
perhaps we can say that a person is, in part, a body (in the way that
a thing which has red in it may be in part red). But this will not
do either, for it inevitably raises the question what the rest of it is.
That is, it suggests that a person is some sort of an amalgam, a
compound of a body and something else (perhaps a soul?). Such
suggestions are precisely what the person theory attempts to combat.
Can we even say that a person has a body? I suppose that
Strawson would want to be able to say that. But what would it mean
on the person theory? Doubtless it means that persons have bodily
attributes. But does it mean any more? Is it to say anything about
a relation between a person and a body? Not on the person theory.
For a body is something which necessarily has solely bodily attributes
and such a thing has nothing to do with persons, which, as we saw,
are things which necessarily have both bodily and mental attributes.
Does very much hang on this question of the relation (on the
person theory) between persons and bodies? A good deal. For example, consider the laws of nature which hold for bodies, the laws
of physics, chemistry, biology. Surely we would want to be able to
say that these laws are true for human bodies as well as other bodies.
If it is true, in its Newtonian formulation, that "a body continues
its state of rest or steady motion unless ... ," we would want this